Pixy's Holiday Journey

by George Lang

The three friends passed on into the schoolroom, red with anger but helpless to defend themselves; their tormentors following, for there was more sport in store which not one of them wished to miss.

Upon the great blackboard was a very fair picture in chalk of the exploit with the hog, and the laughing, jeering and shrill whistling were resumed when they saw the anger of the three friends. The muscular and energetic Fritz rushed to the blackboard to rub out the offending cartoon, but his hands were held by the enemy, his struggles to release them were useless, and he went to his seat in anger and mortification.

At that moment the teacher came, and hearing the sound of weeping he asked the cause. As Odysseus-Fritz was unable to speak for sobbing, the enemy had the welcome chance to give an account of the tilt between the "three-leaved clover" and the four-footed Hector, and as the wit of the school was spokesman, the story lost nothing of its mirth-provoking quality.

The teacher tried his best to look grave over the affair, but the narrative, together with its illustration on the blackboard, was too much for him and he took such a sudden and violent spell of coughing that he was compelled to put his handkerchief to his mouth and go outside the door. Every boy in the room, including the three Grecian warriors, knew that he went out to indulge in the laughter that he could not restrain, and the enemy's triumph was complete.

"You must rub that miserable sketch from the board," he said upon his return, "and write in place of it, 'Do unto others as you would have them do to you,' which will remain there until we need the board for an exercise."

It was a great relief to the three friends that the summer holiday was so near at hand that there would be but little more time for the Trojans to trouble them. Every boy in school had a plan in view as to the way the holiday was to be spent.

"We are going out to the woods every day," said one group of boys. "We will take our luncheon and will fish in the brook, and find good places to set snares in the fall."

"We are going to the woods, too," said another group, "and will gather flowers to press for our herbariums."

But our three friends could overmatch all the pleasures mentioned by their schoolmates, for they had the promise from their parents that they should go to the city of Frankfort on the Main river to visit an aunt of Fritz. Every day their schoolmates heard from some one of the three, or perhaps from all, of the pleasures expected from their first journey, and their visit to a city to remain a whole week. This again aroused the jeers of the enemy which they bore bravely, knowing that it was only envy; so went on serenely with their preparations for the visit.

Their homes were but a short distance apart, therefore out of school as well as in they were much together and all their talk was upon the visit to Frankfort, and of the things they would take, their plans subject to change from day to day.